This invention relates to automatic sewing of an elongated fabric workpiece, such as a curtain, a tent or a lady's dress, and, in particular, to a method and an apparatus for sewing a slide fastener to elongated fabric pieces.
It has been often necessary in sewing an elongated fabric workpiece to stitch together folded marginal edges of the fabric piece to prevent unraveling or to sew two pieces of fabric along their marginal edges with one superimposed on the other for joining them. In such known sewing operations, the steps of feeding the fabric workpiece into the sewing station of a sewing machine, positioning it in situ there, and withdrawing it therefrom are performed manually. Since an elongate workpiece is hard to handle, however, it is very difficult to carry out the above-mentioned three steps simultaneously and successively.
There is a significant drawback in that such sewing operations would require highly experienced dexterity on the part of an operator. Due to the reliance on manual handling during the sewing operation, another drawback is that aesthetically precise and effective sewing could not be expected of such operation.
When a slide fastener is attached to the opening in an elongated workpiece, such as a tent or a lady's dress; at first, one of the pair of stringers of the slide fastener is superposed on and sewn to one workpiece half defining the opening along its longitudinal edge, and, then, the other stringer is, likewise, superposed and sewn longitudinal edge. There arise the same drawbacks, and particularly sewing efficiency is very low.